Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala
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Take Action!
2007 has begun with a series of alarming attacks against Guatemalan human rights organizations. Send an email to the Guatemalan government today. more >>> | |
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Did You Know?
> Guatemala has the most unequal land distribution in the Western Hemisphere, with large landholders who comprise only 2% of the population possessing 70% of the productive lands. > Attacks against human rights defenders in Guatemala increased between 2004 and 2005. In 2005, El Movimiento Nacional por los Derechos Humanos documented 224 attacks against human rights defenders, in comparison with 122 attacks in 2004. > On March 30, 2006, the 11th anniversary of the signing of the indigenous accord, tens of thousands of workers, farmers and indigenous people marched in Guatemala City to demand the strengthening of indigenous rights, restriction of open pit mining licenses, and funds for the Ministry of Agriculture to purchase land for redistribution. | |
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Join the Guatemala Accompaniment Project
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What We've Accomplished!
- Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P) staff has trained and placed more
than 145 human rights monitors in returned refugee and internally displaced
communities, with human rights organizations, and with genocide survivors since
the project first began in 1995.
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Due to heightened security concerns around the visit of the Spanish investigative commission to Guatemala in June-July 2006 (see information about the Guatemalan genocide case before the Spanish courts for background), G.A.P. mobilized sponsoring communities to support four former accompaniers to return to Guatemala to provide "emergency accompaniment" to communities and individuals under threat.
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Responding to a request from massacre survivors, in 2000 we began expanding
our accompaniment work to cover nearly 20 communities of survivors and eyewitnesses
who risk their lives by charging former Guatemalan dictators Efraín
Ríos Montt and Romeo Lucas García along with their military high
commands with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.
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In 2000, when the UN threatened to pull its human rights monitoring mission
out of Guatemala, NISGUA accompaniment volunteers gathered testimonies from
rural communities affected by political violence. These declarations, which
were submitted to the UN, attested to the communities’ profound desire
for a continued UN presence. As a result of our efforts, along with those of
our colleagues, the UN’s mandate was extended for an additional three
years.
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As the human rights situation in Guatemala declined under the 2000-2004 FRG
administration and Guatemalan social justice organizations suffered an increasing
level of threats and attacks, city-based activists asked for international
accompaniment. NISGUA responded by forming a two-person Organization Accompaniment
team in 2001 which has accompanied forensic anthropologists at exhumation sites,
lawyers and witnesses in precedent-setting legal cases, as well as a number
of prominent human rights organizations.
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Twelve years after the 1990 stabbing of Guatemalan anthropologist Myrna Mack,
three intellectual authors of her assassination were brought to trial. The
Myrna Mack Foundation requested an extraordinary level of accompaniment during
the legal processes against the highest ranking military officials to ever
face trial in Guatemala for human rights issues. NISGUA responded with two
full-time accompaniers for the six-week-long process, as well as a number of
shorter-term accompaniers from Sponsoring Communities and U.S.-based NISGUA
staff
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